Re:The drab stupidity of Soylent
by tokenadult on Tuesday August 13, 2013 @01:54PM
(#6207135)
Several of the interesting comments on the blog post kindly submitted here suggest that a reason not to be so doubtful about Soylent is, in the words of one of those comments,
most people currently eat extremely sub-optimal
Are we really sure about the EXTREMELY suboptimal for people in the developed world who are not morbidly obese or dangerously underweight? I have much doubt about this assertion, because for sure my diet, as a middle-class North American, is much more varied as to number of different foodstuffs eaten per week or number of foodstuffs available per season than the diet of, say, my grandparents, who lived to the ages of 48 (death in car crash), 82 (death in car crash), 87, and 99. General rates of morbidity (illness) and mortality (death) are decreasing at ALL ages throughout the world known to most Hacker News readers. Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world.
Girls born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the age of 100, with boys likely to enjoy lifespans almost as long. The article "The Biodemography of Human Ageing" by James Vaupel,
originally published in the journal Nature in 2010, is a good current reference on the subject. Vaupel is one of the leading scholars on the demography of aging and how to adjust for time trends in life expectancy. His striking finding is "Humans are living longer than ever before. In fact, newborn children in high-income countries can expect to live to more than 100 years. Starting in the mid-1800s, human longevity has increased dramatically and life expectancy is increasing by an average of six hours a day."
helps make the picture more clear. ("Period life expectancy" is what is usually reported for a whole country. But cohort life expectancy provides a better estimate of future lifespans of young people today,
and is still steadily on the rise around the world.) So if many people today are eating "suboptimal" diets, as claimed without particular evidence by some of the supporters of the Soylent startup, it would appear that the health effects of that suboptimality are, at least, swamped by more favorable trends.
most people currently eat extremely sub-optimal
Are we really sure about the EXTREMELY suboptimal for people in the developed world who are not morbidly obese or dangerously underweight? I have much doubt about this assertion, because for sure my diet, as a middle-class North American, is much more varied as to number of different foodstuffs eaten per week or number of foodstuffs available per season than the diet of, say, my grandparents, who lived to the ages of 48 (death in car crash), 82 (death in car crash), 87, and 99. General rates of morbidity (illness) and mortality (death) are decreasing at ALL ages throughout the world known to most Hacker News readers. Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w...
Girls born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the age of 100, with boys likely to enjoy lifespans almost as long. The article "The Biodemography of Human Ageing" by James Vaupel,
http://www.demographic-challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2...
originally published in the journal Nature in 2010, is a good current reference on the subject. Vaupel is one of the leading scholars on the demography of aging and how to adjust for time trends in life expectancy. His striking finding is "Humans are living longer than ever before. In fact, newborn children in high-income countries can expect to live to more than 100 years. Starting in the mid-1800s, human longevity has increased dramatically and life expectancy is increasing by an average of six hours a day."
http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity....
A comparison of period life expectancy tables and cohort life expectancy tables for men and women in Britain
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lifetables/period-and-cohort-l...
helps make the picture more clear. ("Period life expectancy" is what is usually reported for a whole country. But cohort life expectancy provides a better estimate of future lifespans of young people today,
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1...
and is still steadily on the rise around the world.) So if many people today are eating "suboptimal" diets, as claimed without particular evidence by some of the supporters of the Soylent startup, it would appear that the health effects of that suboptimality are, at least, swamped by more favorable trends.